This year, in the Federal Executive elections, Evan Harris came top on first preference by a long stretch with 263 votes. Following him was David Rendel (107) and Ramesh Dewan (77) with others on 55. Evan is clearly identified with the progressive, Social Liberal wing of the party, as opposed to the orange book wing. In his manifesto for the Federal Executive he specified his membership of the Social Liberal Forum and his message was stark and specific:

* We need to find ways of making crystal clear that there will be no pre-election pacts and that we will not be de-stabilised by right-field suggestions of this.

* We need to make a virtue of the fact that we make policy transparently and democratically to stress our progressive and radical credentials, and to help the party’s campaigners identify in the public mind which coalition policies are Lib Dem inspired and which are not.

* At the next election we need the public to know that we have no preference for the Conservatives if a coalition is needed. Any post-election partnership working should be based purely on the arithmetic and on the policy overlap and that policy work should derived totally independently of the views of our coalition partners.

Of course Evan is a high profile former MP, so that name recognition will have had a big impact even among the discerning electorate of conference reps. But the scale of the support he received is much greater than that of former MPs and mayoral candidates in this election and in previous elections. Also, unlike some high profile Lib Dems, the strong position he takes on matters secular and scientific means that that profile may result in some people specifically not voting for him, so there may be more to the good showing than mere profile. He also got three times more votes (in the FPC election) than ex-MP Sandra Gidley, who is less clearly identified with the Social Liberal cause.

A similar is picture is seen on the Federal Policy Committee where the top votes were Harris with 169 and Duncan Brack – a founder member of the Social Liberal Forum – on 103. Also elected with high scores were other candidates associated with the Social Liberal position Tony Greaves, Linda Jack, Gareth Epps and Susan Gaszczak.

Evan’s manifesto for FPC was again clear and specific, pulling no punches:

* We need to develop a manifesto which is distinctive, radical and progressive – to ensure:

We are seen as entirely independent of other parties at the next general election (and in elections in the interim).

We distance ourselves from Conservative policies that have been imposed on our ministers and our party by virtue of the coalition.

This means that the FPC should in no way be inhibited by current coalition policy from pursuing true Liberal Democrat inspired policies.

* We need to use policy development – and re-assertion of some existing policy – to assist Nick and our ministers in resisting non-progressive policies from the Conservatives to balance the lobbying from the Tory right.

* We need to make a virtue of the fact that we make policy transparently and democratically to stress our progressive and radical credentials, and to help the party’s campaigners identify in the public mind which coalition policies are Lib Dem inspired and which are not.

At the next election we need the public to know that we have no preference for the Conservatives if a coalition is needed. Any post-election partnership working should be based purely on the arithmetic and on the policy overlap and that policy work should derived totally independently of the views of our coalition partners.

I believe we must always stress our progressive values and prioritise social justice. I welcome Nick’s speech where he said that he does not believe in a smaller state as a basis for the cuts. So, by the time of the next election, economic growth permitting, we must plan to re-invest in pro-poor areas and vital public services.

This platform is almost identical to that of the Social Liberal Forum and as Chair of that, I am very encouraged that the Social Liberal position appears to have become the mainstream. The challenge will now be to have this reflected in policy and strategy – which is what the Social Liberal Forum is all about.

38 Comments

On the whole I think this is good, I mean, for the party and the country. But I wish there wasn’t an orange / social dichotomy in our labelling of people. Quite often I find myself radically orange on one issue, but radically social on another.

I consider myself to be both a social liberal AND an Orange-Booker. The OB begins from the premise of wanting to achieve liberal ends. To me this is just as important as how we reach them.

To me, the success of Evan and other prominent “critical friends” of the coalition like Gareth and Linda is not so much an expression of the SLF/Orange Book factionalism – which as I already said, I view as a totally false dichotomy – but about wanting to ensure that there are voices high up who are willing and able to think and speak independently when ministers appear subsumed into “Coalitionthink” or when senior MPs seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid. That is not a question of left or right but of independence and (to use a word that seems to have gone a bit out of style), equidistance.

To be honest, 90% of what Evan says here has very little to do with the whole social liberal v orange booker thing. His concerns are, quite rightly I think, the lack of attention to equidistance, distinctiveness and good communication. This is not an agenda I can imagine any member from anywhere on the spectrum getting upset over. If anything it’s a grassroots v Westminster bubble agenda.

The number of first preference votes a candidate receives need to be treated with caution as an indicator of opinion. Suppose there were three “Social Liberal Forum” candidates who received 263, 5 and 3 first preferences, but 90% of the 263 didn’t transfer to the other two candidates and 3 “Liberal Vision” candidates who received 110, 110 and 35, and where their third candidate picked up transfers throughout the election and picked up the final place. You would end up with 1 SLF and 3 LV elected (on a quota of 105).

Colin always used to rail against poor reporting of Northern Ireland elections which said that the DUP had come top because of their high number of first preferences

I think you will find that Sandra Gidley is also a good social liberal, just not as well known.
Name recognition does count for a lot. We all think Ros Scott did a good job as president, although I could not tell you what her opinions are – maybe thats why everyone likes her?
However I am pleased that social liberals did well. I know Orange Bookers also identify as social liberals, but the test I would apply would be are they campaigning against the regressive changes in Housing Benefit which threatens to make people homeless and destitute? If not then I struggle to understand how this adds up to social liberalism.

The SLF should make clear what they are doing in the internal elections. If they are promoting candidates for the policy committees then classical liberals will need to do the same. I am not saying that this is a bad idea we just need to know what the ground rules are. I do not see this as a debate between Orange Bookers and social liberals. It is a debate between libertarians and social liberals in my opinion. ‘Orange Booker’ is a slightly ambiguous term, libertarian is a bit clearer.
Ed

I was quite surprised to get elected quite so comfortably. But I was not part of any slate I was aware of. (I used to organise such things a long time ago but this time I just decided to stand.) The phrase “Social Liberal” seems to have come in after my day!

At first I thought this would be a positive step forward, and then this – “We need to make a virtue of the fact that we make policy transparently and democratically to stress our progressive and radical credentials, and to help the party’s campaigners identify in the public mind which coalition policies are Lib Dem inspired and which are not.”

Really, whats the point? Our policy formulation process and which coalition policies come from us dont matter a tinkers damn. You think that benefit claimants, especially housing benefit, are going to turn round and say, “well, I`m being made to suffer, being made to move house, lose my job and friends and have terrble stress placed on my family, but you know what? – them Libdems have some good policies on renewables and recycling. Yeah, they get my vote.” – well, sorry, its not going to work that way. We are supporting the Tories, keeping them in power, enabling them EVERY DAY, therefore it is THEIR policies which we are taking ownership of in the public’s eyes, and theres not a thing you can do about it.

Then came this beauty – “Any post-election partnership working should be based purely on the arithmetic and on the policy overlap and that policy work should (be) derived totally independently of the views of our coalition partners.”

Purely on the arithmetic? So principles and idealism play no part in such an appraisal? You are kidding, aren’t you? Because that makes the joke I made earlier today (that we should have 2 manifestos, one with the good stuff and one with blanks to be filled in by our coalition ‘partner’) look utterly prophetic.

Sorry if this sounds like I’m being vitriolic, but thats because deluded waffle evokes it in me.

I’m more concerned about the number of people who were elected – particularly to the Policy Committee, as it’s pretty much a given that the FE’s going to be an ego-trip – who had no policies or philosophy in their manifestos at all.

As I wasn’t standing this year and feel even less need to be diplomatic than usual, that the vast majority of manifestos consist entirely of ‘Here is my extensive Lib Dem CV, and by the way I don’t live in THAT LONDON / Here is my extensive Lib Dem CV, and by the way I am close to the centre of power’ never fails to turn my stomach. I simply can’t understand what people who apparently have no politics or philosophy – just a mechanical approach to elections – are doing standing for the Policy Committee. And having sat on the FPC for a dozen years or so, people may often have disagreed with me, but I’d often give a higher preference to a coherent right-winger who disagreed with me but had an opinion to put than several perfectly decent, competent, worthy time-serving non-entities whose entire contribution boiled down to speaking once every third meeting to say ‘well, the way we do it in my region / council / farm’…

About time we had proper electronic campaigning and questions fired at all candidates to smoke out those who stand for naff all.

All the people mentioned above won primarily for their name recognition, rather than policy platforms that might be identically admirable to those who didn’t get elected, or indeed identically vacuous (to pluck a name at random, anyone know what Ramesh stands for, after 20 years of being elected to these things?). And ‘I am something to do with the SLF kthxbye’ isn’t much of an improvement, is it?

Short version: anyone who thinks the election results are about any single (or multiple) set of political viewpoints triumphing by anything other than complete accident is deluding themselves, and should read the manifestos, if they can bear it.

Alex: you make some good points, though I think the underlying issue is a bit broader. I had less than 1 in 100 people I contacted ask me a policy question despite the role I was going for. Certainly candidates often don’t do enough to give policy meat in their manifestos (I tried to be different on this; best for others to judge my degree of success) – but I wonder if in part they are responding, consciously or not, to how the relevant electorate also acts?

@ Ed Joyce
“I do not see this as a debate between Orange Bookers and social liberals. It is a debate between libertarians and social liberals in my opinion. ‘Orange Booker’ is a slightly ambiguous term, libertarian is a bit clearer.”

I would agree that there is no distinction to be made on civil liberties, human rights, international and most environmental issues between those who self-describe as orange book liberals, and those of us described as social liberals. So using the term libertarian is not helpful. However there is a difference on social justice, the size and role of the (welfare) state, the role of taxation vs spending cuts, and the weight given to choice vs fairness.

David was making the case that those identified with social liberal priorities appeared to have done well in the elections, but I would accept the health warning of @Hywel.

@mike cobley.
Weak! I didn’t say any post-election partnership working should be based “purely on the arithmetic” did I? You even quoted the sentence yourself where I said “purely on the arithmetic and on the policy overlap”. So your rhetorical “So principles and idealism play no part in such an appraisal?” is answered by your own earlier quotation as these would be of course be represented in the policy. Like I say, weak.

@alex wilcock
David conceded that name-rec counts for a lot, but I hope you’d agree my manifestos for FE and FPC were filled with specific proposals and strategy plans to implement, not biography.

Although I completely agree with you about how candidates should present themselves for the FPC, I’d argue that the problem of managerial politicians is one that pervades the whole British political system at the moment.

Because of FPTP and the need to get 30-40% in any one constituency you rarely here socialist views on organisation of production or true liberal views on drugs (even thought 10% of people might agree with them) being put forward by mainstream politicians . I see why practically this must be the case under FPTP elections as you can’t be anything but mainstream and get elected but I don’t see why this culture needs to infiltrate fair lib dem elections.

@ Evan – was in a rush earlier, should have pointed out that you cannot base a post-election partnership on the arithmetic AND on the policy overlap: it is easy to how such could severely contradict one another. As with the situation we are in now. The arithmetic did not dictate the course taken since May; it was a matter of choice by the leadership from a range of options which were not properly explored or debated. Arithmetic? – thats what I call a weak justification set against the principles that supposedly animate this party.

“I am very encouraged that the Social Liberal position appears to have become the mainstream” – nothing wrong with claiming a bit of credit but I think what we now call social Liberals have been in the ascendancy since the war in the Liberal Party. The distinction is pretty slim, I recall a debate between Laws and Harris and they agreed on 90% of things.

The orange book wasn’t really a manifesto for the Lib Dem right – Steve Webb was a contributor. In places it tried to look at problems from new angles but is fairly tame stuff compared to the coalition governments agenda most of us have signed up to. I’m not sure there is much of a Lib Dem right, people get called very rude things whenever anyone dares to propose any policy that doesn’t float the boat of self appointed Social Liberals

@SMcG – there is no factionalisation here, simply an observation from David that those who ran on a policy platform which chimes in with social liberal values did well in the elections, and that the policy committees will have a balanced makeup as a result. As Lib Dems we don’t just believe in pluralism, we eat sleep and breathe it, so there’s no question of factions…

@Alex Wilcock – agree entirely that name recognition still plays a significant role in internal electoral success when compared with policy and philosophy – which is why it’s all the more interesting that the likes of Evan got such overwhelming support based (in my opinion) on his strong, policy-and-philosophy-rich manifesto (but then coming from a candidate that has a very thin ‘party CV’ and places greater emphasis on policy and philosophy, I’m bound to say that aren’t I?! :-)).

More generally I would also like to see a more competitive election process, with online hustings and the like – to give a real airing to issues, values and policies between candidates of distinction – I have a feeling that given such a process social liberals would do even better!

So to sum up, the SLF think they’ve pulled off some sort of coup, this is almost certainly not based on any objective reality but even if it is nobody else is that bothered by it, almost everybody thinks Evan wrote a good manifesto, and if they don’t it’s not (by appearances) because they’re an “Orange Booker”. I think we can all go home.

I agree with Alex, Prateek and everyone else who is arguing for more competitive elections and more political philosophy. I would also be very interested to read the manifestos so that I can get some idea of where my representatives on the FPC stand – are they on the net anywhere? If not, could they be published? (Thanks to David Hall-Matthews for giving us ordinary members a glimpse of them here.)

I have to say that ascribing Evan Harris’ success to a combination of his “social liberal” position and name recognition cannot be the whole story – he has earned an enormous amount of respect (from me and many other people across the political spectrum) for his tireless campaigning for science and recently on libel reform. It was an enormous loss to the party that he lost his seat and had I had a vote I might well have put him as my first preference for the FPC, despite our disagreements on issues like free schools.

How people vote I think varies depending on how involved you are in the party outside of your own local party.

For someone like me who has been going to conference for nearly 15 years and have a party job, I have some knowledge of the majority of people who are standing. So my judgement is as much made on what I think of them personally rather than their manifesto. This isn’t so much whether I like them, but is similar to Alex Wilcock’s stance “I’d often give a higher preference to a coherent right-winger who disagreed with me but had an opinion to put than several perfectly decent, competent, worthy time-serving non-entities.” This varies from committee to committee. For example, having a clear political stance is more important for me on FPC than FE where I feel competence is more useful, although outspoken people usually get a high preference regardless of committee. Mind you, in this year’s election the majority of people I gave a high preference to weren’t elected.

I suspect that ordinary members who attend few conferences are more likely to make a judgement based on the manifestos as well as the names they’ve heard of.

@PrateekBuch – it would be nice to have a more competitive election where people can ask questions and make decisions that way, but I’m not convinced that many of the voters in the selection would avail themselves of that opportunity and so I expect it would change the result very little. Not saying we shouldn’t do it, but not sure it’ll make much difference.

Over the years I’ve stood in various internal elections I’ve only ever been contacted twice by people wanting to ask questions about my candidature. One of these wanted me to provide him with an analysis of my thoughts on various different philosophers and political theories which he had listed. I thought was a bit excessive for FCC. Maybe that’s why I lost.

Interesting discussion. Like many above I dislike the tendency to label people as belonging to one faction or wing of the party or another.

I’d like to offer one other observation though. Is it it just me, or is there a huge bias towards those whose surnames start with a letter in the first half of the alphabet? Just look at the lists of those elected on each list. This bias has been documented elsewhere eg in council elections, so it would be nice to see manifestos and candidate lists either randomly ordered or in reverse alphabetical order for a change.

I didn’t even know there was a ‘Social Liberal Forum’ when I put Evan ‘1’ on my ballot and I suspect the 100s of other Conference Reps. who did the same. I just thought ‘here’s someone who’ll stand up for the radical tradition I’ve followed since the ’70s and he knows how to make himself heard.’ He’s also someone who’s pro-Science in an innumerate polity that this country’s cursed with.

Thanks for all the responses so far. First, let me start be emphasising that the SLF is not a faction and did not organise a slate. We set out our views on our website and via flyers at Conference – some candidates chose to identify themselves specifically with the SLF and some, like Evan, wrote manifestoes that were very close to the position set out by the SLF. Of those, some did so consciously and others, like Tony, unconsciously. I maintain that it is significant that many of the people elected had similar views to ours. Of course I agree that name recognition was very important too – but my ex post facto analysis suggests that voters were more keen to support social liberal positions than other positions, or none.

I agree that social liberalism is not the binary opposite of economic liberalism – it builds on it. Both have (similar) Liberal goals – but there is some disagreement over how to get there – as Evan points out. The Social Liberal Forum advocates a progressive approach that seeks at all times to narrow the gap between rich and poor – especially in the context of cuts. We believe that Lib Dems in and outside government should be arguing for that every day – and letting voters know when we win – and when we lose – those arguments.

I strongly disagree with Mike Cobley – it’s extremely important to make a public distinction between Lib Dem policies and beliefs and the compromises agreed in coalition. We support compromise on principle – it is part of the pluralism that Prateek mentioned – but that should not be allowed to be portrayed as the same as merging our ideas with another party. This is especially important when necessity requires us to be compromising with a party that we disagree with on many things. Sometimes we have to swallow things we don’t like – why not say so occasionally?

The SLF supported the decision to go into coalition with the Conservatives in order to turn some Lib Dem ideas into government policies. We still support that – and want us to shout about it when we succeed in making policies fairer. But we also want more clarity in advance about what our separate, progressive party ideas are, and more honesty about where we fail to turn them into government policy. This will help show voters that we remain a progressive, left-of-centre party. Vince seems to get this. Tim Farron’s presidential campaign suggests he does too. And the party election results suggest that a lot of activists do as well.

“We need to make a virtue of the fact that we make policy transparently and democratically to stress our progressive and radical credentials, …”

That we have a democratic and transparent policy process and that this is a big advantage is is one of the founding myths of the Lib Dems. What unfortunately got lost along the way (I would say from the outset) is that it also needs to be effective – that is it needs to disect the existing failed paradigms by which the country is ruled to yield a clear analysis of what is wrong in this country, why there is such a large underclass, why inequality is growing and the rest?

By the measure of effectiveness Lib Dem policy-making is a dismal failure and self-satisfaction with our allegedly wonderful policy process is the last thing we need. In over 20 years it’s never delivered much more than 20% of the national vote despite the clear awfulness of the big parties and at the first whiff of real power important chunks of its work have been found to be unworkable (and I don’t buy the convenient excuse that any problems are down to the exigencies of Coalition).

I’m not even convinced that the policy process is as transparent and democratic as supposed. For those on the inside it no doubt appears so, but most are on the outside and the name-recognition thing means that to a considerable extent what we have is a self-perpetuating group that is more in tune with the Westminster Village than to the real economy or the country at large. The result is a remarkably conservative (small ‘C’), risk-averse approach dominated by group-think. The party may aspire to be radical but in reality it isn’t.

The new FPC needs to get its skates on, think strategically and provide some leadership.

“what we have is a self-perpetuating group that is more in tune with the Westminster Village than to the real economy or the country at large. The result is a remarkably conservative (small ‘C’), risk-averse approach dominated by group-think.”

The reality is that, with a few noted exceptions (and, thankfully, slightly more this year than most years), among our Party’s internal election candidates’ lists there are some of the most narcissistic individuals around who appear to want to ‘be’ rather than to ‘do’. I agree with Alex W that the ‘Interim Peers’ list was the worst of these by some distance. Although our party is still considerably more democratic than the other main two, it becomes clear to active Lib Dems at grass roots that the Party’s committees have a potential for being sidelined more than ever while we are in Coalition. I look to Evan Harris, Tim Farron et all to prove this gloomy assessment wrong.

I think you’re arguing at cross purposes. If our coalition worked the way Evan would (I think) like it to work, with the Government’s programme worked out in continuous open negotiation, such that the public could easily tell when we had got our way and when we had not, then things would be reasonably fine. But it doesn’t.

When we are raising tuition fees sky-high, it just looks duplicitous for us to claim that our own policy is still to phase fees out. Had we had a public negotiation with the Tories, and demonstrably bargained fees downwards, things would not have looked quite so dreadful. But we didn’t.

The real problem is that Nick Clegg would prefer to present himself as 110% aligned with Tory policies. He could easily make us look more distinctive (and, indeed, more genuinely a moderating influence), but he prefers not to.

This underlying debate is not, in my experience, between left and right, nor between economic and social liberals. It is a debate between social liberals and classical liberals ie libertarians. Libertarians exist on both the right and left of the party. Libertarians stand for small state and person freedom. The ‘bonfire of the quangos’ allowed for a raising of the threshold of tax on low earners. If we slimmed down the state further we could raise the tax threshold further. This post illustrates roughly where the debate begins http://socialliberal.net/2010/03/15/no-tax-rises-ever-say-it-aint-so-nick/
My concern is that taxes raised for ‘vital public services’ will be levied on the lower middle class and ununionised workers earning under £20,000 per annum.
Ed

“If the ‘SLF’ continue to brand build and behave like Militant did within Labour in the 90s I’ll be forced to re-hash all of the sorrows arising from their founding fathers of the SDP!”

Of course the main difference is that SLF reflects the views of the majority of supporters of the party and that the orange book group on the right of the party and for now leading it represent a small group who are trying to push the rest of the party in a more radical direction away from the general consensus of the party. Now, what was that you where saying about Militant?

“Of course the main difference is that SLF reflects the views of the majority of supporters of the party and that the orange book group on the right of the party and for now leading it represent a small group who are trying to push the rest of the party in a more radical direction away from the general consensus of the party. Now, what was that you where saying about Militant?”

Evidence?

RIght. There isn’t any, is there? Its just an assertion, because the majority of comments on LDV come from that wing of the party.

I think if you spoke to our members more generally (not just those who rant at conference) you might get a different picture.

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